Lone Wolf #9: Miami Marauder by Mike Barry Read Free Book Online Page B

man almost two feet off the floor and then, the train swaying, Al’s body pitched into the wall, his head hitting with a crack.
    There was no conscious premeditation in this, it had all happened before; you reached a point finally where necessity and situation meshed at some level beneath consciousness, removed from calculation, and that was what had happened now because Wulff knew if he knew anything at all that things could only get worse, that whatever was happening was an ongoing situation where the odds would consistently diminish and finally he would find himself in a small, black tube of space with these men where there would be nothing for them to do, anymore, but kill him … and before they could enter that tube he had to take his chances, take them where they came.
    Now, the man Al out of the picture, sagging almost comically into a padded chair against the wall, the other one, Joe, was bearing down upon Wulff with the gun, his eyes fixed with purpose, flicking his glance from trigger finger to Wulff trying to estimate distances and Wulff came out with a foot, knocked the man off balance, then kicking into a wall. The sound of the impact was horrifying; the partitions of the car were thin steel reinforced only by another layer behind it and it seemed as if the side of the car had caved in.
    The man rebounded out of the wall, the instability of the partition then giving him impetus to spring back unhurt, the gun still in his hand, still levelling, and Wulff was almost caught flatfooted by the man’s involuntary charge. He had not expected him to come off the wall in that way. A chair fell over and Wulff heard a thin screaming from the corridor; it seemed that a couple had come into the car, a young girl, now clinging to a man, her mouth in an
o
of distress, the man trying to pull her from the car but the girl paralyzed, shaking. They had wanted to come into the bar car for a quiet drink he supposed, well, more luck to them. The railroads were promoting themselves now as a different kind of trip; they could take this story home with them.
    The man named Joe, still holding the gun, collapsed into Wulff’s arms with the force of the rebound and for a moment they struggled with one another in a complex, horrid embrace. He could smell the high, dense odors coming from the man’s body, odors both sweet and foul, excitement of course but more than excitement coming from him and for an instant they struggled that way in a parody of sexual embrace, Joe gasping and groaning, trying to get the gun up and against Wulff and Wulff, trying to free himself, establish some kind of distance, felt the man smothering him, swaddling him in that dense grip and then they stumbled over another cocktail table and into the wall of the car. Wulff felt himself beginning to slip then fall, the man tumbling over him.
    Now the two of them were cleaving into a ball of activity and he could feel the gun pressing various areas of his body; nape, kidney, groin with a shy tentativeness that was the more dreadful because at any moment he expected it to go off and discharge the slug that would destroy him. But the gun did not fire, there was some mistake in the angle between finger and trigger and Joe could not get off a shot. Then Wulff had managed to wrap himself over and was lying on top of the man, panting, still reaching for the gun, noting with some corner of perception that the other man, Al, on the floor was stirring. He had not been knocked out by the blow then, only stunned, a resilient type this one and in just a few moments, unless Wulff was able somehow to get free of this one, it would be two against one, two with guns … and this energized him into one last burst of effort. He heaved against the man whose body now covered him like a cup and threw Joe off him. The man hit the floor with a thud, rolling, his knees drawn up, still holding onto his gun and stretching out flat. Wulff kicked him, feeling his toe dig into something soft,